


bug in a venus flytrap

by flowermasters



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Love Confessions, Psychological Torture, The 100 (TV) Season 7 Speculation, Time Travel, beware vague s7 spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24415906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowermasters/pseuds/flowermasters
Summary: “Why couldn’t you sleep?” Bellamy asks. “Bad dreams?”Echo exhales, too softly to be a sigh, but nearly. “No. It’s nothing.”They should've never left the Ark.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Echo
Comments: 12
Kudos: 42





	bug in a venus flytrap

**Author's Note:**

> 🦆🦆🦆
> 
> This is based on some of the leaked spoilers for 7x02-7x04, but there's nothing too detailed.

Bellamy wakes disoriented, as if from a bad dream, although he can’t quite remember what of. Someplace clinical, austere, too cold—Mount Weather, maybe. Definitely no place good. He shakes away the notion of voices muttering just beyond understanding, glad he can’t remember anything else, and kicks the tangled covers off his legs. 

As he sits up in bed, looking around the room by the glow of the emergency lamp, Bellamy feels strangely out-of-place. The surroundings take on a strange cast in the darkness, and the air is cool and still despite the rush of the vent overhead. It’s always a little bit too cold for comfort on the Ark, especially in the middle of the night; century-old heating vents can only work so hard and threadbare blankets can only cut the chill so much. He’s spent more nights in space than he has on the ground, but he misses the ground far more often than he ever missed the Ark. The racket of bugs and frogs on warmer nights, the twittering of birds in the morning, the blue coolness of dawn. It’s easier to forget about those things when he’s not waking up alone.

Echo’s side of the bed is cool, so she must have been gone for some time now. She hasn’t slipped out in the middle of the night in months. Bellamy almost feels stung. Then, after a moment of sitting in the stillness, he decides to go after her.

He finds her, of all places, at the observation port. He doesn’t bother to announce himself as he approaches—she probably heard him coming down the corridor. It’s like Echo has a sixth sense sometimes. She’s like a deer, always scenting something on the breeze.

“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks, voice low. Sound carries, even up here.

She turns her head to look at him and a brief rush of affection washes over him; maybe it’s in the way she smiles, soft and a little sheepish, or the way the glow of Earth softens the angles of her face. It’s a tenderness laced with an edge of deja vu. He could get used to this feeling.

“No,” she says. “You?”

“Got cold all by myself,” Bellamy says, and her smile turns a little wry before she schools her expression and looks back at the glass.

“Well,” she says, “you’ve managed without me before.”

He has to admit, he likes it when Echo plays coy. She allows it when Bellamy sidles up behind her, wrapping his arms loosely around her middle as he tucks his face into her hair. It’s still slightly damp from her shower before bed, fragrant not with flowers or herbs but with the mild clinical tang of Ark shampoo. 

“Well,” Bellamy says, “I need a lot of managing. It’s too big a job for one person.”

It’s nonsensical, and has its desired effect; Echo cracks a smile, letting out an amused hum as her posture softens and she leans into his embrace. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You like it,” he says, and she doesn’t argue this. She hums again, lighter this time, when he kisses her neck through her hair. Then she wraps her arm around herself, around his arms, and strokes her hands lightly over his forearms. He gentles his hold on her and they stand there for a moment, observing, as the Ark hums under their feet.

“Why couldn’t you sleep?” Bellamy asks. “Bad dreams?”

Echo exhales, too softly to be a sigh, but nearly. “No. It’s nothing.”

“Echo,” he says. “You know I have them, too.”

He thinks of telling her about his own dream, the one he can’t quite remember, but the words don’t come. Instead, he says, “It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me.”

“It wasn’t a dream,” she says, mindlessly toying with a hole near the elbow of his sleeve. “You’ll think I’m . . .”

“What?” Bellamy says, shifting his head to get the best view he can of her profile. When he sees her jaw clench, ever so slightly, he softens his tone. “No, really, what?”

“A coward,” she says.

“I would never.”

“You might,” she says, “if you knew that sometimes, when the pipes groan at night, it still scares me out of my skin.”

Bellamy frowns; fortunately, he’s pretty sure she misses the expression, although you can never be quite sure with Echo. “Really?”

“Yes,” she says. “I feel like—like a child sometimes. It always makes me think of the Reapers creeping at night, hunting. Even though I know it’s foolish, I can’t shake it.” Her expression, what he can see of it, has gone slightly flat, lit dully by the light reflecting from the planet below. She always shuts down like this, or at least tries to, when she has to be honest. “Three years on, and this place still plays tricks on my mind.”

“Echo,” Bellamy says. “I’ve lived here for most of my life. Trust me when I say it doesn’t get easier.”

She shifts her weight slightly and tilts her head, confused. “What do you mean?”

Bellamy lets his gaze drift down to Earth. “We’re not meant to live like this,” he says. “Cooped up in a tin can, floating through the void, living off rations. Sitting in front of lamps to get our daily allotment of artificial sunshine so we don’t all lose our minds. You’re not a coward, or crazy, for hating it.”

He knows why Echo came to the viewport; it’s soothing, nearly hypnotizing, to look out at the view of what should be their home. It’s also—even to an Arker—vaguely terrifying, if you look too long. At some point, the vast blackness around you stops being normal and starts to become incomprehensible. That’s when the most primal part of you remembers: _We’re not supposed to be here. One wrong move, one malfunction, and we’re all dead._

Knowing Echo, she’s here, at least in part, to confront that fear. To challenge it. All on her own, in silence—far from being a coward, she’s too brave for her own good.

For a few seconds, he can’t tear his eyes away from space; it threatens to suck him up right alongside Echo, to hold them both hostage here. He has the strangest notion of voices just out of earshot again, of movement in the blackness, beyond their still half-reflection.

Then Echo speaks, and the view lets go of him. “I don’t hate it,” she says softly. “I am grateful for it, really.”

She strokes a hand lightly over his forearm again, and he realizes what she’s trying to say; she’s grateful that he saved her from Praimfaiya, that he convinced her to stay alive all those years ago. “Never thank me for that,” Bellamy says, giving her a little squeeze. “You don’t have to thank me for bringing you here. I didn’t, anyway, not really.”

“You did,” she says softly, “but that’s not what I meant.”

Bellamy pauses. “Then what?”

“I just—I’m grateful,” she says. “And happy. To be here. With you.”

“Oh,” Bellamy says. Echo’s gaze is fixed on the glass again, and she’s gone just a little too still in his arms, although she’s playing at total ease, still stroking his arms. This is how they work, though. He’s gotten pretty good at filling in the gaps of what Echo can’t or won’t say. He thinks he might’ve been doing it, somehow, since they first met, even through everything, through all the bullshit and the violence. “Me, too, sweetheart.”

Echo smiles a bit, the set of her shoulders relaxing, and Bellamy thinks— _now or never_. “You know I love you,” he says. “Don’t you?”

For a moment, he’s not sure how Echo’s going to react. Far be it from him to accuse the Azgedans of a taste for romance—he has no frame of reference, no idea at all how Grounders view declarations of love. For Echo, he suspects it might go something like _I’m happy to be here with you._

To his surprise, Echo doesn’t tense. But it’s not like her to flinch. “I know,” she says softly. “Did you know that I love you, too?”

Bellamy hadn’t realized how much he’d tensed up until just now, as Echo keeps rubbing soothing circles over his skin. “Yeah,” he says, and kisses her hair again.

They stand there for a long while, just standing—not stock-still, but not quite swaying, either. Breathing together. The stars twinkle, unthreatening spots of brightness in a sea of black. At some point, either Bellamy closes his eyes or space becomes all he can see; Echo’s body is weightless in his embrace, intangible. The Ark hums like a living thing, pulsing like a heart. He can’t see; he can’t breathe. As the first sparks of panic begin to flare—just as he begins to think, _Echo? Where’s Echo? Where am I?_ —a voice cuts through the white noise.

“Pull him out for a moment,” a voice says, cool and masculine. “He needs a respite.”

The hum of the Ark eases off—but it’s not the Ark at all. His arms aren’t around Echo—they’re strapped to a chair, as are his legs and neck. To prevent him from thrashing, bucking like an unruly animal. 

The blackness recedes next, fading to dull gray. His eyes struggle to focus, blinded by a row of circular ceiling lights above him and by a thin film of tears in his eyes, rising helpfully to combat the dryness. They must’ve been open for a while.

Gooseflesh rises on what little exposed flesh he has. His stomach turns. The Disciples have helpfully refrained from giving him anything to throw up.

There’s movement in his peripheral vision—he shifts his gaze as best he can to see a woman, clad in an outfit of gray and white, rising from a chair at a console next to the chair he’s strapped to. She reaches for his face, first lifting something metallic away from his forehead, some kind of lightweight headpiece. There’s something hard in his mouth, plasticky—a bite guard. To prevent him from cracking teeth, maybe, or from using the limited weapons at his disposal.

“You’ve been wasting time,” the male voice says again, somewhere out of Bellamy’s blurred field of vision. The murmur of other voices in the room seems to quiet briefly, as if in deference to a leader, before returning to their previous low rumble. “What more need we learn of Echo kom Azgeda?”

His pronunciation is a little off— _ahzgeda_ , not Azgeda. _Echo_ , Bellamy thinks. He hasn’t been with Echo at all. He’s been taken back to the Ark, but only in memory. That’s why things felt both familiar and strange—because he wasn’t actually in control of any of it. And they’ve been watching, somehow, they can see what he’s seen, his _memories_ —that means they’ve seen Echo’s smile, her laugh, her tears. Her weaknesses. Who else have they seen? What else are they looking for? What will they do to Echo if they find her?

“Nothing,” the woman says. She wipes at Bellamy’s forehead with a cloth. Is he sweating? He’s so cold, like he’s damp all over. “I thought it would be best to get a full understanding of the people he’s closest to. I thought it might be useful. Sir.”

“Move on,” the man says, just toneless enough to avoid sounding curt. “Dose him again. You know what we seek.”

“Yes, sir,” the woman says.

There’s a brief pause as the woman fidgets with something at her console. Then she says, “I’m going to take your mouthpiece out to give you some water.”

She pauses, and Bellamy realizes sluggishly that she’s waiting for a response. He nods as best he can with his neck pinned. She pulls out the bite guard, careful not to get her fingers too close to his mouth, then puts a metal cup to his lips for him to gulp lukewarm water. When she pulls the cup away, he doesn’t even think to scream, although he could. He feels claustrophobic, hogtied like this, and a throbbing headache is beginning to set in. He clears his throat and tries to speak— _what are you doing to me?_ —but his voice is shot; has he been screaming, then?

“You’ll be alright,” the woman says. He can’t really get an impression of her features; she might as well be faceless, just a light brown blur of a face and a knot of dark hair. They must’ve drugged him. His vision is swimming. “I’ll give you another dose, and you’ll feel better.”

 _No_ , Bellamy tries to say. 

“What?” his captor says as she adjusts the thin headpiece back into place. Her tone is calm but not unkind. She actually sounds a bit—intrigued. Curious. “Are you trying to say ‘Echo?’ Or was it ‘O?’”

 _No_ , Bellamy tries again, but it’s a rasp, a husk of a word. _Stay away from them, don’t touch them, where are they—_

The woman fidgets with something above him, and a moment later he feels it—something cool flowing into the vein at the crook of his right elbow. His will to fight, fragile as it is, begins to leave him almost immediately. He’s left with nothing but a vague sense of disconsolation as she fits the mouthpiece carefully back into his mouth. They’re going to put him under again, flick through his memories like evening entertainment—or worse, like subjects in a case study, inspecting every detail until they find whatever it is they need. 

Echo. He wants to be back with Echo, if they’re going to send him somewhere in his own head. They should have never come to Sanctum—they should’ve never gone back to Earth—they should’ve never left the Ark. They could’ve made a life there, somehow. There has to be a life for them somewhere.

The cloth is back, this time wiping gently at his cheeks. His captor’s voice is muted when she speaks, muffled under a growing hum. “Bellamy, can you hear me? Are you in pain? Blink twice for yes.”

Bellamy closes his eyes and slips under again.


End file.
